Infidelity Articles By Katie Lersch

By: Katie Lersch: It is not uncommon to take a huge hit in self-esteem if your spouse cheats or has an affair. However, some wives experience something even worse – a feeling of complete worthlessness. Not only do these wives not feel as valuable as they used to feel; they do not feel any value at all.

A wife might explain, “I found out six weeks ago that my husband has been cheating on me. He claims that he ended it. I do not know if this is true. I would have thought that, as the weeks passed, I might start to feel a little better. But I haven’t. I actually feel worse. I now realize how much I have sacrificed for my family. And if my marriage ends – and this may be a good possibility – I have nothing. After we had kids, my husband and I jointly decided that I would stay home. My mom always worked and left us with abusive grandparents. So my husband did not have to work too hard to convince me that this was the best idea. I intended to stay home until my children started school. However, one child developed a health condition, so I had to stay home even longer. As a result, my professional skills are dated. God forbid, if my marriage ends and I have to support myself, I am not sure how I would do this. And I am not sure if any man would be attracted to an unemployed woman with two kids. I feel pretty hopeless and worthless right now because I feel like I’m dependant on my husband and I have no options. He knows this so he may not be as remorseful as he should be because he knows that I am limited. At the same time, I know that it is not in my best interests to let my husband know that I feel this way, but I’m not sure how effective I am going to be at hiding it. I feel like my worthlessness just seeps out of my body and my being right now.”

Understand Your Value: I know exactly how you feel. I felt similar to this after my own husband’s affair. I had to make very conscious efforts to keep myself upbeat and prideful. I did this in several ways, which I will discuss in more detail below. But first, I want to try to give you a pep talk. You need to realize that holding your family together and being the captain of the family ship actually holds a great deal of value. Because you were a constant loving and supportive presence, your children are being raised by the most important and formative person in their lives – their mother. This may benefit them more than you could possibly imagine. No one else is able to give your family what you can. There is no way that your husband could replace you with anyone else in this regard.

The Pitfalls Of Worthlessness: With that out of the way, I want to address how hard you have to fight for your self-worth right now. Here is why. If you continue to doubt your own worth, you will sabotage anything that you are trying to accomplish. If you’re trying to save your marriage, you will never believe your husband when he insists that he is still committed to you, even if he is being 100% truthful. If you decide to end your marriage, you will take this feeling of worthlessness with you into any new relationship, any new job, or any new friendships. It will be like walking around with one arm tied behind your back. It saddles with a handicap that you don’t deserve.

Now I know you might be thinking, “Ok, I realize all of this, but maintaining my self-esteem and sense of being worthy is easier said than done. I know all of this intellectually, but this doesn’t stop my feelings.” I completely understand. It is something that you are going to have to be conscious of every day and then you are going to have purposely do things to counteract it.

Picking Yourself Up: You may want to try affirmations, exercise, self-improvement, splurges, counseling or whatever is necessary to feel your best. I took things so far that I pursued additional education. I did this because even if I stayed in my marriage I wanted to feel that my professional attributes were current. Knowing that I was competent in this way helped me feel like an equal. I also worked on my appearance for myself. I made changes that I wanted and I did not care about my husband’s opinion because this was for me.

There were days when I didn’t feel like doing any of this, but I knew that if I didn’t, I was going to continue to be stuck. In my marriage or outside of it, I needed to know that I could depend on myself to provide what I needed. Once I proved this to myself, I had tons more confidence and this inadvertently improved my marriage because I believed my husband when he gave me compliments or discussed his commitment to our marriage.

It is extremely easy to fall back on feelings of worthlessness when your spouse is unfaithful. The irony of that is that it is your spouse who should be affected, not you. Always remember that nothing about you has changed. You are the same person, but your perspective is different. So, you must change your perspective by building yourself up. Give yourself permission to sing your own praises and to do whatever is necessary to feel like you are the only one who matters right now. You can read more about my own journey here: http://surviving-the-affair.com

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